Protesters outside a court in Hong Kong on Tuesday, showing support for two Indonesian women, Sumarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih, who were killed in 2014.CreditJerome Favre/European Pressphoto Agency

By Mike Ives

Nov. 8, 2016

HONG KONG — A Hong Kong judge on Tuesday sentenced a British banker to life in prison for murdering two Indonesian women at his luxury apartment in 2014, bringing to a close a gruesome case that cast a spotlight on social inequality and the excesses of the financial sector in one of Asia’s richest cities.

A nine-member jury found the banker, Rurik George Caton Jutting, guilty of double murder after deliberating for less than a day in High Court. The decision was unanimous.

“I accept this as a just and appropriate judgment,” Mr. Jutting, 31, said in a statement that his lawyer read after the verdict was announced, according to a report in The South China Morning Post. “The evil I have inflicted can never be remedied by me in words or by action.”

Murder convictions carry a mandatory life sentence in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese city that has its own legal system.

Mr. Jutting had pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter on the grounds of “diminished responsibility,” according to reports in the local news media. His lawyers said in court that the claim was based on his client’s struggles with narcissism, sexual sadism and substance abuse.

A government psychiatrist rejected that argument during the trial, saying that while cocaine and alcohol had impaired Mr. Jutting’s self-control, he was still responsible for the murders.

Mr. Jutting, who had worked for Bank of America in Hong Kong and studied at Cambridge University in Britain, killed the women at his high-rise in the Wan Chai neighborhood, a popular nightclub district.

He tortured one, Sumarti Ningsih, 23, for three days before cutting her throat with a serrated knife and leaving her remains in a suitcase on his balcony, news reports said, citing a prosecutor’s statements at the trial. He had met her through an internet forum.

He slashed the throat of the second, Seneng Mujiasih, 26, whom he had met at a bar, after she noticed a rope gag in the apartment and began shouting.

The case made headlines around the world, in part because of the grotesque nature of the killings, but also because Hong Kong is generally considered to be among the safest cities in Asia.

Both women came to Hong Kong as domestic workers. Ms. Sumarti later returned on a tourist visa, and Ms. Seneng’s domestic worker visa had lapsed.

The city has more than 300,000 foreign domestic workers, primarily from Indonesia and the Philippines. They are subject to more legal restrictions than other expatriate workers, including bankers. Advocacy groups say that employers and the government routinely treat the workers like second-class citizens and that they are vulnerable to abuse.

Suyitno, Ms. Sumarti’s older brother, who goes by one name, said in a statement on Tuesday that she came from a farming family and that she came to Hong Kong in early 2011.

Mr. Suyitno said in the statement, issued before the verdict, that the family’s economic condition had worsened since Ms. Sumarti’s death because she had been its only breadwinner and that he hoped Mr. Jutting would be “punished severely.”

He also demanded that the Indonesian government pay for the education of Ms. Sumarti’s 7-year-old son.

“We have no more income to ensure his education,” he said. The Indonesian Consulate in Hong Kong did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a joint statement after the verdict, the victims’ families said they felt relieved.

“However, both families are very desperate because of their loss and worry for their future,” the families said in the statement, which was provided by the Indonesian Migrant Workers Union in Hong Kong. “They hope for proper compensation from Rurik Jutting.”

Yustina, a friend of Ms. Sumarti’s and a former domestic worker in Hong Kong who goes by one name, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that she was not comforted by the verdict.